A HelloCampus Live virtual tour acts as one of the first steps that a prospective student takes to connect with your school and to get a feel for campus life. So, why not put your school’s best foot forward and build your HelloCampus Live tour to stand out from any other tour out there! Students don’t just want to see the classic and (quite frankly) boring tour stops on campus. They want to connect with your school, get a feel for campus life, and see the environment where they could imagine themselves living. Fortunately, HelloCampus is here for you to exceed visitors' expectations and have them thinking, “Wow, this may just be the school for me!”
That’s why we have compiled a list of some clever and fun content ideas to help inspire you when building/editing your HelloCampus Live virtual tour. Our platform was designed to make YOU the creator of your school’s tour. So, let your unbridled imagination create stories of success that will last with your visitors long after they leave the tour room!

Include a “Meet Your Tour Guide” Introduction Slide

A great way to break the ice and get each tour started is for your tour guides to introduce themselves to the visitors. Ask your tour guides for a few fun facts about themselves (maybe a passion or a hobby) and create an informational slide that includes their picture or maybe even a small video. Starting a tour with content like this can give the tour guide enough support to break the screen barrier and create a personal connection with the visitors. When visitors can connect with their tour guide, it can lighten the mood and make everyone feel more comfortable, opening up to questions and sincere interactions. Keep in mind, your tour guides are a part of the community where visitors imagine themselves living. Each tour guide’s character and spirit is in line with your school’s culture. So, portraying their personality through diverse media content can help your visitors envision what their future friends can be like and what connections they can make at your school.

Drive Your Visitors into Campus (Use Drone Footage for Higher Impact)

Now that your visitors have met and feel more comfortable with each other, your campus tour can start! A unique way to begin is to drive your visitors into campus. Create a "Welcome to Campus" pin where your tour guide will show video footage of the school's entrance or the route to campus by foot or car. It will make visitors feel like they're actually on their way to take a tour! Creating the video is not hard. Use a phone (with a higher resolution camera), a go-pro, or any DSLR and do the walk into the campus yourself while hand-holding the camera. For smooth footage, we recommend Ben Hess's 'Heel Toe’ technique. Ben suggests to “walk with your knees slightly bent and carefully step on your heel, roll onto your foot and then onto your toes.” This produces a “really nice even walk and minimizes the bounce”. If you’d prefer to show the drive, rather than the walk into campus, you can have someone drive a car while you hold the camera from the passenger’s seat. Lastly, for an even higher impact, you can create the same concept by using drone footage, if your college or university has access to a drone camera. This would really let visitors see a beautiful aerial view, especially if it's a scenic route. If you like these ideas but feel they may be too complicated, you can look into hiring a freelancer to do it for you. Or, a fun and inexpensive way to capture footage is to offer a challenge for the students at your school. Ask those who are passionate about filming (and who may already own a drone camera) to capture some footage as part of a contest. The student who takes the best video can be mentioned in the tour as the "creator".

Use 360º Images to Showcase Your Campus

Another way to help visitors feel as if they are really on campus is the use of 360º images. An app like Google Street View lets you take high-quality 360º images right from your mobile phone. The app is free and simple to use, just use your phone to capture a few photos, and the app will transform them into seamless photospheres. These images let visitors experience your campus as if they are standing there in real-time and seeing the landscape/buildings from every direction. Plus, it’s a cool interactive element for visitors to click and drag the image around from their own device! After the tour guide shows visitors the outside scenery of a specific building, they can then bring the visitors to the inside. Here, the tour guide can show more content to make visitors feel like they are actually walking into the building and experiencing/learning about it in person. Download Google Street View for Android here or Apple here.

“Bump” into People Around Campus

Have your tour guides ever accidentally bumped into someone around campus on an in-person tour, and took the time for them to say hello to the tour group? Well, your tour guides can do the same thing on your HelloCampus Live virtual tour! By uploading some videos of people saying hi, or talking shortly about a tour stop or the school in general, you can recreate these interactions in a virtual setup. Accidentally “bump” into different professors, students, notable alumni, or even the president of your college/university. This can help visitors get to know more about the people that make your school unique, as well as hear some important information from them. You can even "run into" some athletes, or your school’s mascot to liven up the tour and give visitors something to talk about other than facts and figures.

Include a QR Code/Application Waiver Code

Once you have reached your last tour stop (we recommend ending on your Admission’s pin), you can then explain important information about the next steps for visitors and invite them to take an in-person tour (if applicable). An innovative way to present a call to action is a QR code. Include an informational slide where students can scan the QR code from their phone and it will open your admissions page or an online document with next steps. Whether it’s a source of information or a “Meet Your Counselor’s” page on your school’s website, it is a perfect way to keep visitors interested and to move them along your admission pipeline. In addition, you can offer visitors an application waiver code. This will add even more incentive for visitors to apply! All they have to do is include this promotional code in their application, and it will waive their fee, for previously attending your live, virtual tour.

We hope that we could help inspire some creativity for you, whether you are just starting to build your HelloCampus tour from scratch, or trying to liven your current one. Feel free to use any of our suggestions, as well as to include your own fun ideas! Our platform has so many options when it comes to tour content, so you can get as creative as you’d like! And, we are always here to help you along the way. Email us at any time at hello@hellocampus.com. Good luck with your creative efforts!

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